By Dr Shabir Choudhry
05 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Before we can make any progress on Kashmir we need to understand what is the Kashmir dispute, as different people have different definitions of the Kashmir dispute. Also we want to define what we mean by Kashmir.
When we refer to Kashmir we mean the State of Jammu and Kashmir, as it existed on 14th August 1947; and the entire state, in our view, is disputed which includes areas of Gilgit and Baltistan, Azad Kashmir, the Valley, Jammu and Ladakh.
Kashmir dispute, whether you call it India and Pakistan problem or give it any other name, is essentially related to national identity and future of people of Jammu and Kashmir. To make it further clear it is an issue of right of self – determination, which is our birthright and doesn’t have to be granted by anyone.
United Nations is supposed to be guardian of human rights. It is there to protect and promote human rights and that includes fundamental right of self - determination, from where all other political, social, economic and cultural rights emanate.
It is unfortunate that we Kashmiris never had an opportunity to present our case to the UN. India and Pakistan presented their case on Kashmir in the UN, not to protect and advance interest of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, but to protect and promote their national interest, which was in conflict to the national interest of people of Jammu and Kashmir.
It was on the floor of the UN where we lost our right of self – determination, and in its place we were given a right of accession wrapped as self – determination. Many Kashmiris were persuaded to buy that as it was presented to them, but thinking Kashmiris were able to distinguish the difference between the two and rejected it.
It is a long and complicated story why the UN could not even get its own resolutions implemented and give people of Jammu and Kashmir right of accession. Ok, we understand these resolutions were passed under chapter six and therefore they could not be implemented by force, as it was the case with certain other resolutions passed under chapter seven.
But fact however remains that it was government of Pakistan that first refused to withdraw its armed personnel from the areas of the state occupied by Pakistan. A complete Pakistani withdrawal in accordance with the UNCIP resolution of August 1948, had to be followed by a withdrawal of ‘bulk’ of Indian forces and subsequent plebiscite where the people of Jammu and Kashmir had to decide whether they wanted to become Pakistanis or Indians.
That never happened and later on Kashmir became a part of the ‘Cold War’ politics, and that provided India an opportunity to change its stance on Kashmir. They started calling Kashmir its ‘integral part’, even though the accession to India was ‘provisional’ and had to be ratified by the people in a referendum.
The slogans of ‘integral part’, and ‘sha rag’, meaning a jugular vein dominated and controlled politics of Jammu and Kashmir, and to large extent politics of India and Pakistan.
It is not possible to give all the details regarding the Kashmir dispute here. Fact however is that it has been a bone of contention between the two countries since 1947, and has been the major source of tension and instability in the region. There have been many attempts to resolve it through bilateral talks, wars, armed struggle, proxy war and international covert or overt involvement, but to date there is no breakthrough.
In my view, after the involvement of the UN, Baroness Emma Nicholson and the EU took first major international initiative on Kashmir, which culminated in the form of that report on Kashmir that is still known as Emma Nicholson report, even though the EU Parliament with thumping majority passed it. That report by no means is perfect, and I hope its author will also agree with this. But it does provide us some new bases to consider the Kashmir dispute in new and much changed world when UNCIP resolutions were passed in late 1940s.
It is true that the EU is not the UN. Both institutions have different mandate and different roles. But with time role and influence of the EU is increasing. The EU has its own experience, strength and influence, and can help us to promote culture of peace, dialogue and mutual coexistence.
If we are sincere to resolve the Kashmir dispute and have peace and stability in the region, and yet are unable to make the desired progress, then we should not shy away from seeking outside help and advice, be it direct or indirect.
Both governments and Kashmiri leaders claim that they are sincere in resolving the Kashmir dispute. They also claim that they are well-wishers of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Let actions speak louder than words. Anyone can claim to be your friend, but as thinking people and people with future at stake, we need to see who is our real friend and who is pretending to be our friend. The criterion for this is very simple to analyse this friendship.
Kashmir dispute, as we understand, is a political one. It relates to nations right to determine its future without any restriction imposed on them. Those who have transformed the dispute to a religious one cannot be our friends, as it has created new problems for us and have paved way for division of the State on religious lines.
Those who brought Jihadi warriors from various parts of the world, in my view, are not our friends as the Jihadi culture brought extremism and hatred, and that changed fundamental character of our struggle; and made it part of Islamic fundamentalism whatever that means in the context of the world today.
We also need to consider view of those who advocate that Kashmir is an issue of economic development. Yes, like any other society and nation we also want economic development, but the Kashmir dispute in reality is not an economic issue.
Economic development comes as a result of investment, be it domestic investment or external; and investors WILL NOT investment in an area where there is political instability, armed conflict or a civil war. Political stability with proper planning brings investment and economic development.
So it is not complicated like egg and chicken situation - which came first, we know there has to be political stability first before we can embark on economic development. I am sure if Kashmiris are masters of their own destiny, and if Kashmiri economists plan with a Kashmiri interest in mind, they can within a few years make Kashmir economically stable.
I understand both India and Pakistan, rightly or wrongly, have vested interest in Kashmir, and some sections of the Kashmiri community have also become part of this vested interest. It is believed that the biggest hurdle in the way of peace and resolution of the Kashmir dispute is this vested interest. To some the Kashmir dispute has become a lucrative business, and this entrepreneurial thinking and approach must change if we are to make any progress in resolving the Kashmir dispute.
Also if we are to make any progress then we, people of Jammu and Kashmir, have to think as Kashmiris, and protect and promote a Kashmiri interest. We should not become foot soldiers of India and Pakistan. Let India and Pakistan defend their national interests and let us defend our interest, our identity and our future. I end with this quote of Khalil Gibran:
“Pity on a nation which is divided into number of groups and each group calls itself the nation”.
Email:drshabirchoudhry@gmail.com
'People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right - especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong.' Thomas Sowell
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Monday, 8 October 2007
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
The Junta’s Accomplices
Western companies still trading with Burma use it as their first and last defence. If we withdraw, they insist, China will fill the gap. China has become the world’s excuse for inaction.
GEORGE MONBIOT
China has become the world’s excuse for inaction. If there is anything a government or a business does not want to do, it invokes the Yellow Peril. Raise the minimum wage to £6 an hour? Not when the Chinese are paid £6 a year. Cap working time at 48 hours a week? The Chinese are working 48 hours a day. Cut greenhouse gas emissions? The Chinese are building a new power station every nanosecond. China is our looking-glass bogeyman. If you behave well, the bogeyman will get you.
As we saw during George Bush’s climate pantomime last week, China the excuse is not the same place as the China the country. Bush insists that the US cannot accept mandatory carbon cuts, because China and India would reject them. But while he stuck to his voluntary approach, China and India called for mandatory cuts(1). “China” is a projection of the West’s worst practices.
I mention this because the western companies still trading with Burma use it as their first and last defence. If we withdraw, they insist, China will fill the gap. It is true that the Chinese government has offered the Burmese generals political protection in return for cheap resources. In January, for example, China vetoed a UN resolution condemning the junta’s human rights record. Three days later it was given lucrative gas concessions in the Bay of Bengal(2). It is also true that the Chinese government has no interest in promoting democracy abroad. But the more the Burmese junta must rely on a single source of investment and protection, the more vulnerable it becomes. China is not intractable. If western governments boycotted the Beijing Olympics, they would precipitate the biggest political crisis in that country since 1989.
The businesses still working in Burma are having to scrape the barrel of excuses. Even Tony Blair, that bundle of corporate interests in human form, said “we do not believe that trade is appropriate when the regime continues to suppress the basic human rights of its people.”(3) Explaining his company’s decision to pull out of the country, the CEO of Reebok noted that “it’s impossible to conduct business in Burma without supporting this regime. In fact, the junta’s core funding derives from foreign investment and trade.”(4) As the junta either controls or takes a cut from most of the economy, as almost half the tax foreign business generates is used to buy arms, any company working in Burma is helping to oppress its people.
The travel firms Asean Explorer and Pettitts, which take British tourists round the country in defiance of Aung San Suu Kyi’s pleas, both refused to comment when I rang them, then slammed down the phone(5). Aquatic, a British company which provides services for gas and oil firms, was more polite, but still refused to talk(6). The tourism companies Audley Travel and Andrew Brock Ltd promised to phone me back but failed to do so(7). But aside from invoking the Chinese bogeyman, each of the others produced a different justification.
The spokeswoman for Orient Express, a travel company which runs a cruiser on the River Irrawaddy and a hotel in Rangoon, told me that “tourism can be a catalyst for change.” Given that tourism has continued throughout the junta’s rule, I asked, how effective has that catalyst been? “There has been very slow progress, but we feel it has helped.”(8) The Ultimate Travel Company explained that “We feel we just like to offer the people who travel with us a choice. If people want to travel, they can. And really I’d prefer not to enter into a debate about it.”(9)
Rolls-Royce, which overhauls engines for Myanmar Airways, a company owned by the state, told me that it operates “in line with UK export licences.… As long as we are meeting government requirements, that’s what we work to. I’m not getting into a debate on this issue. We’re doing this to ensure passenger safety.”(10)
William Garvey, the boss of the furniture company which bears his name and which works mostly in Burmese teak, admitted that he buys timber “that comes from Rangoon, through government channels.” But if he stopped, “a highly likely consequence is that the rate of felling would increase dramatically. … whatever you may think about the Burmese government, they are still using a sustainable system for extracting teak.” Aren’t human rights a component of sustainability? “In the strict sense, no.”(11)
The managing director of Britannic Garden Furniture, which makes its benches from Burmese teak, and supplies the Royal Parks and the Tower of London, told me “I know it’s no excuse to say we don’t buy it directly. … You try and get teak from other sources. But it’s rubbish. … The government has given us no directive not to trade with Burma.”(12)
All these companies have felt some pressure already, thanks to the work of the Burma Campaign UK, which includes them on its “dirty list”(13). But I have stumbled across one western firm which most Burma campaigners appear to have missed. It is run by one of the world’s most famous sportsmen, the golfer Gary Player. Player has made much of his ethical credentials. Next month he will host the Nelson Mandela Invitational golf tournament, whose purpose is “to make a difference in the lives of children”. One of his websites shows a painting of Mr Player bathed in radiant light and surrounded by smiling children. Nelson Mandela stands behind him, lit by the same faint halo(14).
Golf, to most of us, looks like a harmless if mysterious activity, but in Burma it is a powerful symbol of oppression. Some of the country’s courses have been built on land seized from peasant farmers, who were evicted without compensation. Golf is the sport of the generals, who conduct much of their business on the links.
Player’s website shows him, in 2002, launching the “grand opening” of the golf course he designed, which turned “a 650-acre rice paddy into The Pride of Myanmar. The golfer’s paradise that stands in Myanmar today is said to be living proof that miracles do happen.”(15) I asked his company the following questions. Who owned the land on which the course was constructed? How many people were evicted in order to build it? Was forced labour used in its construction? As Player’s company is based in Florida, did the design of this course break US sanctions? His media spokesman told me “The Gary Player Group has decided not to comment on any questions regarding Myanmar-Burma.”(16) It seems to me that there is a strong case for asking Nelson Mandela to remove his name from Mr Player’s tournament.
If, like me, you have been shaking your head over the crushing of the protests, wondering what on earth you can do, I suggest you get on the phone to these companies, demanding, politely, that they cut their ties. I sense that it wouldn’t take much more pressure to persuade them to pull out. By itself, this won’t bring down the regime. But it will cut its sources of income, and allow us to focus on confronting the reality of Chinese investment, rather than the excuse.
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. Ewen MacAskill, 29th September 2007. Europeans angry after Bush climate speech ‘charade’. The Guardian.
2.No author, 20th July 2007. Myanmar: Pariah or Prospect? Energy Compass.
3. Tony Blair, 25 Jun 2003. Prime Minister’s Questions. Hansard Column 1042.
4. Paul Fireman, 7th June 2005. Burma: Time to Restore Human Rights and Democracy. Wall Street Journal.
5. Phoned on 28th September.
6. ibid.
7. ibid.
8. Pippa Isbell, Orient Express, 28th September 2007.
9. Gloria Ward, Ultimate Travel Company, 28th September 2007.
10. Martin Brodie, Rolls-Royce, 28th September 2007.
11. William Garvey, William Garvey Ltd, 28th September 2007.
12. The managing director would not give her name. 28th September 2007.
13. Dirty List
14. The painting flashes up in the top righthand panel here
15. Gary Player Design, 21st November 2002. Design Excellence Revealed at Grand Opening of Gary Player Signature Course in Myanmar.
16. Duncan Cruickshank, 30th September 2007.
GEORGE MONBIOT
China has become the world’s excuse for inaction. If there is anything a government or a business does not want to do, it invokes the Yellow Peril. Raise the minimum wage to £6 an hour? Not when the Chinese are paid £6 a year. Cap working time at 48 hours a week? The Chinese are working 48 hours a day. Cut greenhouse gas emissions? The Chinese are building a new power station every nanosecond. China is our looking-glass bogeyman. If you behave well, the bogeyman will get you.
As we saw during George Bush’s climate pantomime last week, China the excuse is not the same place as the China the country. Bush insists that the US cannot accept mandatory carbon cuts, because China and India would reject them. But while he stuck to his voluntary approach, China and India called for mandatory cuts(1). “China” is a projection of the West’s worst practices.
I mention this because the western companies still trading with Burma use it as their first and last defence. If we withdraw, they insist, China will fill the gap. It is true that the Chinese government has offered the Burmese generals political protection in return for cheap resources. In January, for example, China vetoed a UN resolution condemning the junta’s human rights record. Three days later it was given lucrative gas concessions in the Bay of Bengal(2). It is also true that the Chinese government has no interest in promoting democracy abroad. But the more the Burmese junta must rely on a single source of investment and protection, the more vulnerable it becomes. China is not intractable. If western governments boycotted the Beijing Olympics, they would precipitate the biggest political crisis in that country since 1989.
The businesses still working in Burma are having to scrape the barrel of excuses. Even Tony Blair, that bundle of corporate interests in human form, said “we do not believe that trade is appropriate when the regime continues to suppress the basic human rights of its people.”(3) Explaining his company’s decision to pull out of the country, the CEO of Reebok noted that “it’s impossible to conduct business in Burma without supporting this regime. In fact, the junta’s core funding derives from foreign investment and trade.”(4) As the junta either controls or takes a cut from most of the economy, as almost half the tax foreign business generates is used to buy arms, any company working in Burma is helping to oppress its people.
The travel firms Asean Explorer and Pettitts, which take British tourists round the country in defiance of Aung San Suu Kyi’s pleas, both refused to comment when I rang them, then slammed down the phone(5). Aquatic, a British company which provides services for gas and oil firms, was more polite, but still refused to talk(6). The tourism companies Audley Travel and Andrew Brock Ltd promised to phone me back but failed to do so(7). But aside from invoking the Chinese bogeyman, each of the others produced a different justification.
The spokeswoman for Orient Express, a travel company which runs a cruiser on the River Irrawaddy and a hotel in Rangoon, told me that “tourism can be a catalyst for change.” Given that tourism has continued throughout the junta’s rule, I asked, how effective has that catalyst been? “There has been very slow progress, but we feel it has helped.”(8) The Ultimate Travel Company explained that “We feel we just like to offer the people who travel with us a choice. If people want to travel, they can. And really I’d prefer not to enter into a debate about it.”(9)
Rolls-Royce, which overhauls engines for Myanmar Airways, a company owned by the state, told me that it operates “in line with UK export licences.… As long as we are meeting government requirements, that’s what we work to. I’m not getting into a debate on this issue. We’re doing this to ensure passenger safety.”(10)
William Garvey, the boss of the furniture company which bears his name and which works mostly in Burmese teak, admitted that he buys timber “that comes from Rangoon, through government channels.” But if he stopped, “a highly likely consequence is that the rate of felling would increase dramatically. … whatever you may think about the Burmese government, they are still using a sustainable system for extracting teak.” Aren’t human rights a component of sustainability? “In the strict sense, no.”(11)
The managing director of Britannic Garden Furniture, which makes its benches from Burmese teak, and supplies the Royal Parks and the Tower of London, told me “I know it’s no excuse to say we don’t buy it directly. … You try and get teak from other sources. But it’s rubbish. … The government has given us no directive not to trade with Burma.”(12)
All these companies have felt some pressure already, thanks to the work of the Burma Campaign UK, which includes them on its “dirty list”(13). But I have stumbled across one western firm which most Burma campaigners appear to have missed. It is run by one of the world’s most famous sportsmen, the golfer Gary Player. Player has made much of his ethical credentials. Next month he will host the Nelson Mandela Invitational golf tournament, whose purpose is “to make a difference in the lives of children”. One of his websites shows a painting of Mr Player bathed in radiant light and surrounded by smiling children. Nelson Mandela stands behind him, lit by the same faint halo(14).
Golf, to most of us, looks like a harmless if mysterious activity, but in Burma it is a powerful symbol of oppression. Some of the country’s courses have been built on land seized from peasant farmers, who were evicted without compensation. Golf is the sport of the generals, who conduct much of their business on the links.
Player’s website shows him, in 2002, launching the “grand opening” of the golf course he designed, which turned “a 650-acre rice paddy into The Pride of Myanmar. The golfer’s paradise that stands in Myanmar today is said to be living proof that miracles do happen.”(15) I asked his company the following questions. Who owned the land on which the course was constructed? How many people were evicted in order to build it? Was forced labour used in its construction? As Player’s company is based in Florida, did the design of this course break US sanctions? His media spokesman told me “The Gary Player Group has decided not to comment on any questions regarding Myanmar-Burma.”(16) It seems to me that there is a strong case for asking Nelson Mandela to remove his name from Mr Player’s tournament.
If, like me, you have been shaking your head over the crushing of the protests, wondering what on earth you can do, I suggest you get on the phone to these companies, demanding, politely, that they cut their ties. I sense that it wouldn’t take much more pressure to persuade them to pull out. By itself, this won’t bring down the regime. But it will cut its sources of income, and allow us to focus on confronting the reality of Chinese investment, rather than the excuse.
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. Ewen MacAskill, 29th September 2007. Europeans angry after Bush climate speech ‘charade’. The Guardian.
2.No author, 20th July 2007. Myanmar: Pariah or Prospect? Energy Compass.
3. Tony Blair, 25 Jun 2003. Prime Minister’s Questions. Hansard Column 1042.
4. Paul Fireman, 7th June 2005. Burma: Time to Restore Human Rights and Democracy. Wall Street Journal.
5. Phoned on 28th September.
6. ibid.
7. ibid.
8. Pippa Isbell, Orient Express, 28th September 2007.
9. Gloria Ward, Ultimate Travel Company, 28th September 2007.
10. Martin Brodie, Rolls-Royce, 28th September 2007.
11. William Garvey, William Garvey Ltd, 28th September 2007.
12. The managing director would not give her name. 28th September 2007.
13. Dirty List
14. The painting flashes up in the top righthand panel here
15. Gary Player Design, 21st November 2002. Design Excellence Revealed at Grand Opening of Gary Player Signature Course in Myanmar.
16. Duncan Cruickshank, 30th September 2007.
UK-US Iraqi Holocaust And Iraqi Genocide - 3.9 Million Deaths
By Gideon Polya
02 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org
A bottom-line measure of the consequences of human actions is provided by excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that should not have happened, excess mortality, avoidable mortality). Excess deaths can be VIOLENCE-related (from bombs and bullets) or NON-VIOLENT (due to deprivation). For a detailed analysis of excess deaths from violence and deprivation see “Global avoidable mortality”: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/and “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ and http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ).
Authoritative estimates of violent and non-violent Iraqi excess deaths now show that the post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq total 2.0 million (see: http://open.newmatilda.com/crosswire/ ), the 1990-1990 Gulf War violent deaths totalled 0.2 million (see: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_Iraqis_died_in_the_Gulf_War ), and the 1990-2003 Sanctions War was associated with 1.7 million excess deaths. The total 1990-2007 excess deaths in Iraq now (September 2007) total 3.9 MILLION (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/17066/42/ ).
The post-invasion NON-VIOLENT deaths in Iraq (now 0.7-0.8 million) are being caused by grievous deprivation by the US Coalition Occupiers in gross violation of the Geneva Convention (see: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm ). The post-invasion VIOLENT deaths (0.8-1.2 million) are being caused by violence from Occupiers, failure of Occupier security, Indigenous fighters and their confrères, from directly or indirectly US-funded sectarian militias, Government militias and death squads and by US mercenaries.
This is what Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War actually says ) (see: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm ), QUOTE:
Article 55
To the fullest extent of the means available to it the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.
The Occupying Power may not requisition foodstuffs, articles or medical supplies available in the occupied territory, except for use by the occupation forces and administration personnel, and then only if the requirements of the civilian population have been taken into account. Subject to the provisions of other international Conventions, the Occupying Power shall make arrangements to ensure that fair value is paid for any requisitioned goods.
The Protecting Power shall, at any time, be at liberty to verify the state of the food and medical supplies in occupied territories, except where temporary restrictions are made necessary by imperative military requirements.
Article 56
To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the cooperation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties.
If new hospitals are set up in occupied territory and if the competent organs of the occupied State are not operating there, the occupying authorities shall, if necessary, grant them the recognition provided for in Article 18. In similar circumstances, the occupying authorities shall also grant recognition to hospital personnel and transport vehicles under the provisions of Articles 20 and 21.
In adopting measures of health and hygiene and in their implementation, the Occupying Power shall take into consideration the moral and ethical susceptibilities of the population of the occupied territory. END QUOTE.
Yet if you consult the World Health Organization (WHO) you discover that the “total annual per capita medical expenditure” permitted in Occupied Iraq by the US Coalition is $135 (2004) as compared to $2,560 (UK), $3,123 (Australia) and $6,096 (the US) (see WHO: http://www.who.int/countries/en/ ) – and as compared to a truly Auschwitz-style, genocidal $19 in UK-US-Australia-occupied Afghanistan (post-invasion excess deaths 2.5 million and post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 2.0 million: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/16802/42/ ).
The US Alliance Occupier countries are involved in both active genocide and passive genocide in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories - see the recently published “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (editor. Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney 2007: http://nla.gov.au/anbd.bib-an42083982 and especially “Australian Complicity in Iraq Mass Mortality”, also web-published: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ).
The NON-VIOLENT post-invasion excess death estimate of 0.7 million is from UN Population Division data (see: http://esa.un.org/unpp/ ) and the 0.8 million estimate is from UNICEF data: (see: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html ) and employing the estimate that for impoverished Third World countries the under-5 infants deaths are approximately 0.7 of the total excess deaths) (see “Layperson’s Guide to Counting Iraq Deaths”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5872/26/ ).
The VIOLENT post-invasion excess death estimate of 1.2 million is from the recent report from the expert UK ORB (Opinion Research Business) polling organization (see: http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78 ; reported by the Los Angeles Times, the UK Guardian and Observer and even buried (with gross minimization) by the irresponsible BBC but as reported by Wikipedia - see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
ORB_survey_of_casualties_of_the_Iraq_War - overwhelmingly IGNORED by Mainstream media) and the 0.8 million estimate comes from top US Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University medical epidemiologists published in the top medical journal The Lancet, 2006 (see: see: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190907.htm ).
TOTAL post invasion excess deaths of 2.0 million + Gulf War violent deaths of 0.2 million + Sanctions War excess deaths of 1.7 million = 3.9 million post-1990 excess deaths, an horrendous total commensurate with those of the Jewish Holocaust, the WW2 Nazi German-inflicted Jewish Genocide (5-6 million deaths) and of the largely UN-REPORTED, “forgotten”, man-made, British-inflicted Bengali Holocaust (Bengal Famine, Bengali Genocide) of WW2 British India (4 million deaths) (see “The Forgotten Holocaust – the 1943/44 Bengal Famine”: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/2005/07/forgotten-holocaust-194344-bengal.html and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ).
Undoubtedly what is happening in Iraq is a continuing 2-decade HOLOCAUST (i.e. involves a huge number of deaths).
According to the UN Genocide Convention, Article II, QUOTE: “Article II. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with INTENT [my emphasis] to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ).
The American phase of the Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide has been going on INTENTIONALLY since 1990; the British involvement has been ongoing off and on since 1914 (see my book "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950": http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ).
The Iraqis are SEMITES from the heartland of SEMITIC culture dating back about 7,000 years.
While (contrary to lying Mainstream media reports) Iran's President Ahmadinejad does NOT deny the Holocaust (he merely wants more scholarly research) (see what he ACTUALLY says in his own words: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/16983/42/ ), the racist Bush-ite- and Racist Zionist-beholden, racist, lying, Iraqi Holocaust-ignoring, Iraqi Genocide-denying Anglo-American Mainstream media are almost COMPREHENSIVELY involved in sustained, INTENTIONAL, anti-Semitic Holocaust Denial over the continuing ACTUALITY of the Iraqi Holocaust, the Iraqi Genocide in which most of the victims are Women and Children.
Anti-Semitic Denial of the Jewish Holocaust attracts a 10 year prison term in Austria and lengthy custodial sentences elsewhere in Western Europe. Indeed the Germans are proposing that the EU criminalize denial of all contemporary holocausts and genocides (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/10528/42/ ). Would YOU buy goods or services from Nazis or Holocaust Deniers?
Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity, inaction kills and inaction is complicity. Comprehensive, personal and collective, International and Intra-national Sanctions and Boycotts against the largely Anglo-American, Bush-ite, anti-Semitic mass murderers, Holocaust Committers and Holocaust Deniers are URGENTLY required until the killing stops, the victims are recompensed and the perpetrators arraigned, tried and punished in war crimes trials before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003). He has just published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ).
02 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org
A bottom-line measure of the consequences of human actions is provided by excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that should not have happened, excess mortality, avoidable mortality). Excess deaths can be VIOLENCE-related (from bombs and bullets) or NON-VIOLENT (due to deprivation). For a detailed analysis of excess deaths from violence and deprivation see “Global avoidable mortality”: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/and “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ and http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ).
Authoritative estimates of violent and non-violent Iraqi excess deaths now show that the post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq total 2.0 million (see: http://open.newmatilda.com/crosswire/ ), the 1990-1990 Gulf War violent deaths totalled 0.2 million (see: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_Iraqis_died_in_the_Gulf_War ), and the 1990-2003 Sanctions War was associated with 1.7 million excess deaths. The total 1990-2007 excess deaths in Iraq now (September 2007) total 3.9 MILLION (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/17066/42/ ).
The post-invasion NON-VIOLENT deaths in Iraq (now 0.7-0.8 million) are being caused by grievous deprivation by the US Coalition Occupiers in gross violation of the Geneva Convention (see: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm ). The post-invasion VIOLENT deaths (0.8-1.2 million) are being caused by violence from Occupiers, failure of Occupier security, Indigenous fighters and their confrères, from directly or indirectly US-funded sectarian militias, Government militias and death squads and by US mercenaries.
This is what Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War actually says ) (see: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm ), QUOTE:
Article 55
To the fullest extent of the means available to it the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.
The Occupying Power may not requisition foodstuffs, articles or medical supplies available in the occupied territory, except for use by the occupation forces and administration personnel, and then only if the requirements of the civilian population have been taken into account. Subject to the provisions of other international Conventions, the Occupying Power shall make arrangements to ensure that fair value is paid for any requisitioned goods.
The Protecting Power shall, at any time, be at liberty to verify the state of the food and medical supplies in occupied territories, except where temporary restrictions are made necessary by imperative military requirements.
Article 56
To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the cooperation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties.
If new hospitals are set up in occupied territory and if the competent organs of the occupied State are not operating there, the occupying authorities shall, if necessary, grant them the recognition provided for in Article 18. In similar circumstances, the occupying authorities shall also grant recognition to hospital personnel and transport vehicles under the provisions of Articles 20 and 21.
In adopting measures of health and hygiene and in their implementation, the Occupying Power shall take into consideration the moral and ethical susceptibilities of the population of the occupied territory. END QUOTE.
Yet if you consult the World Health Organization (WHO) you discover that the “total annual per capita medical expenditure” permitted in Occupied Iraq by the US Coalition is $135 (2004) as compared to $2,560 (UK), $3,123 (Australia) and $6,096 (the US) (see WHO: http://www.who.int/countries/en/ ) – and as compared to a truly Auschwitz-style, genocidal $19 in UK-US-Australia-occupied Afghanistan (post-invasion excess deaths 2.5 million and post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 2.0 million: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/16802/42/ ).
The US Alliance Occupier countries are involved in both active genocide and passive genocide in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories - see the recently published “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (editor. Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney 2007: http://nla.gov.au/anbd.bib-an42083982 and especially “Australian Complicity in Iraq Mass Mortality”, also web-published: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ).
The NON-VIOLENT post-invasion excess death estimate of 0.7 million is from UN Population Division data (see: http://esa.un.org/unpp/ ) and the 0.8 million estimate is from UNICEF data: (see: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html ) and employing the estimate that for impoverished Third World countries the under-5 infants deaths are approximately 0.7 of the total excess deaths) (see “Layperson’s Guide to Counting Iraq Deaths”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5872/26/ ).
The VIOLENT post-invasion excess death estimate of 1.2 million is from the recent report from the expert UK ORB (Opinion Research Business) polling organization (see: http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78 ; reported by the Los Angeles Times, the UK Guardian and Observer and even buried (with gross minimization) by the irresponsible BBC but as reported by Wikipedia - see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
ORB_survey_of_casualties_of_the_Iraq_War - overwhelmingly IGNORED by Mainstream media) and the 0.8 million estimate comes from top US Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University medical epidemiologists published in the top medical journal The Lancet, 2006 (see: see: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190907.htm ).
TOTAL post invasion excess deaths of 2.0 million + Gulf War violent deaths of 0.2 million + Sanctions War excess deaths of 1.7 million = 3.9 million post-1990 excess deaths, an horrendous total commensurate with those of the Jewish Holocaust, the WW2 Nazi German-inflicted Jewish Genocide (5-6 million deaths) and of the largely UN-REPORTED, “forgotten”, man-made, British-inflicted Bengali Holocaust (Bengal Famine, Bengali Genocide) of WW2 British India (4 million deaths) (see “The Forgotten Holocaust – the 1943/44 Bengal Famine”: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/2005/07/forgotten-holocaust-194344-bengal.html and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ).
Undoubtedly what is happening in Iraq is a continuing 2-decade HOLOCAUST (i.e. involves a huge number of deaths).
According to the UN Genocide Convention, Article II, QUOTE: “Article II. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with INTENT [my emphasis] to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ).
The American phase of the Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide has been going on INTENTIONALLY since 1990; the British involvement has been ongoing off and on since 1914 (see my book "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950": http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ).
The Iraqis are SEMITES from the heartland of SEMITIC culture dating back about 7,000 years.
While (contrary to lying Mainstream media reports) Iran's President Ahmadinejad does NOT deny the Holocaust (he merely wants more scholarly research) (see what he ACTUALLY says in his own words: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/16983/42/ ), the racist Bush-ite- and Racist Zionist-beholden, racist, lying, Iraqi Holocaust-ignoring, Iraqi Genocide-denying Anglo-American Mainstream media are almost COMPREHENSIVELY involved in sustained, INTENTIONAL, anti-Semitic Holocaust Denial over the continuing ACTUALITY of the Iraqi Holocaust, the Iraqi Genocide in which most of the victims are Women and Children.
Anti-Semitic Denial of the Jewish Holocaust attracts a 10 year prison term in Austria and lengthy custodial sentences elsewhere in Western Europe. Indeed the Germans are proposing that the EU criminalize denial of all contemporary holocausts and genocides (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/10528/42/ ). Would YOU buy goods or services from Nazis or Holocaust Deniers?
Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity, inaction kills and inaction is complicity. Comprehensive, personal and collective, International and Intra-national Sanctions and Boycotts against the largely Anglo-American, Bush-ite, anti-Semitic mass murderers, Holocaust Committers and Holocaust Deniers are URGENTLY required until the killing stops, the victims are recompensed and the perpetrators arraigned, tried and punished in war crimes trials before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003). He has just published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ).
Global Hypocrisy On Burma
02 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org
As the Burmese military brutally cracks down on a popular uprising of its citizens demanding democracy the question on many minds is – so what is the world going to do about it?
From the trend visible so far the answer is simple- nothing at all.
Nothing, that is, beyond the usual condemnations and pious appeals for 'peaceful dialogue' and the posturing at international forums in support of the Burmese people.
Nothing more than sending a lameduck UN envoy to negotiate with the paranoid Burmese generals. Negotiate what? Funeral services for their innocent victims mowed down like rabbits on the streets of Rangoon?
It is not that nothing can be done at all – to begin with, how about kicking the illegitimate military regime out of the UN seat it continues to occupy and replacing it with the country's elected government-in-exile? Why should Burma continue to be a member of ASEAN or for that matter, by default, also of the Asia-Europe Meeting or ASEM?
What about international sanctions on foreign companies doing business in Burma- including dozens and dozens of Western companies apart from those from Asia? Why should large oil companies like the US based Chevron, the Malaysian Petronas, South Korea's Daewoo International Corp or the French Total continue to be involved in Burma without facing penalties for their support of one of the world's most heinous dictatorships?
The answers to these elementary questions are quite elementary too- it is Burma's abundant natural resources and investment opportunities that really matter. Which government really gives a damn for corralled Burmese citizens desperately battling a quasi-fascist regime that is open to foreign enterprises and shut to its own people.
Following the bloodshed in Burma the new French President Nicholas 'Napoleon' Sarkozy for instance grandly called on French companies to freeze all their operations in Burma. Close on his heels Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner clarified however that the French oil giant Total, the largest European company operating in Burma, will not pull out for fear they will be 'replaced by the Chinese'.
Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister also expressed 'outrage' at the Burmese government's despicable behaviour but was mum about UK companies merrily investing away in Burma. Between 1988 and 2004 companies based out of British territories invested over £1.2bn in Burma, making Britain the 2nd largest investor in this supposedly ostracised country. The sun it seems has not only set on the British Empire but–on its way out- also deep fried the conscience of its politicians.
The Japanese government, another monument to global hypocrisy, shed crocodile tears at the cold-blooded killing of Kenji Nagai, a Japanese journalist shot by a Burmese soldier after he had fallen to the ground while photographing a fleeing crowd of protestors. Mustering all the courage at its command Tokyo asked for an 'explanation' and got the response 'ooops….very sorry" from the Burmese Foreign Minister who must have also muttered 'that was easy – Moroni San'.
On the question of cutting off aid to the murderous Burmese regime of course the Japanese made their position quite clear- ' it is too early' for such action. They are probably politely waiting for the regime to murder an entire posse of Japanese pressmen before doing anything - Burmese deaths being of no consequence anyway.
The most predictable rhetoric of course came from US President George Bush who while announcing a slew of sanctions on Burma's military leaders incredibly said, "I urge the Burmese soldiers and police not to use force on their fellow citizens".
Wait a minute, that is what the Burmese soldiers and police are trained and paid to do- shoot fellow citizens- so what was the point Bush was trying to make? As usual only he and his Maker- from whom he claims to take instructions directly- knows.
Bush could have maybe uttered better chosen words but none of it would have been credible coming from a man with a record of war mongering and mass killings in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Bush own regime's systematic destruction of international human rights norms have robbed it of the right to lecture even something as low as the Burmese junta about anything. A sad situation indeed.
What about Burma's old friends like Thailand, Singapore or Malaysia who in a surprise indictment of their fellow ASEAN member expressed 'revulsion' at the use of deadly force against innocent civilians? Their statement was welcome no doubt but comes at least two decades too late to be of any real meaning.
Burma's military rulers have already milked the dubious ASEAN policy of 'constructive engagement' for what it was worth to shore up both their regime at home and claw their way back to recognition abroad. In the early nineties when the Burmese generals were really down and out it was ASEAN who offered them succour and friendship while chastising those who called for democracy in Burma as being ignorant of 'Asian values'.
All this leaves China and India, two of Burma's giant neighbours, who for long have showered the Burmese junta with investments, aid and sale of armaments and whom the world now expects to use their 'influence' over the generals.
China's active support for the Burmese regime is not surprising at all for a country with its own sordid record of suppressing democratic movements at home and shooting civilian dissenters. I don't however think the Chinese are really worried about Burmese democracy triggering off another Tiananmen-like event in their own country- not immediately at least and not as long as Chinas' consumerist boom keeps its population hypnotised.
In fact the Chinese, pragmatic as they are and conscious of protecting their many investments in Burma, may also be among the first to actively topple the Burmese junta if they feel that the tide of protests for democracy is about to win. Their future position on Burma will surely seesaw like a yo-yo depending which cat, black or white, is catching the mice.
Of all the countries around the world the most shameful position is held by India, once the land of the likes of Mahatma Gandhi but now run by politicians with morals that would make a snake-oil salesman squirm. India likes to claim at every opportunity that it is 'the world's largest democracy' but what it tells no one, but everyone can see, is that its understanding of democracy is also of the 'lowest quality'.
Why else would the Indian government for instance send its Minister for Petroleum Murali Deora to sign a gas exploration deal with the military junta in late September just as it was plotting the wanton murder of its own citizens. In recent years India, among other sweet deals, has also been helping the Burmese military with arms and training- as if their bullets were not hitting their people accurately enough.
It was not always like this though. The "idealist" phase of India's foreign policy approach to Burma dates from when Indian Prime Minister Nehru and his Burmese counterpart U Nu were close friends and decided policies based on trust and cooperation. After U Nu's ouster in a military coup in 1962, successive Indian governments opposed the dictatorship on principle.
At the height of the pro-democracy movement in 1988 the All India Radio's Burmese service for instance had even called General Newin and his men 'dogs' (very insulting to dogs of course). With the coming of the P.V.Narasimha Rao government in 1992 though it is India that has been wagging its tail all along.
The "pragmatic" phase of Indian foreign policy toward Burma since the early nineties meant throwing principles out the window and doing anything required to further Indian strategic and economic interests. An additional excuse to cozy up to the military junta was the perceived need to counter 'Chinese influence' over the country.
In all these years however there is little evidence that India's long-term interests were better met by "amoral pragmatism" than the "muddled idealism" that had prevailed in the past. In fact, what emerges on a close examination of current Indian policy is that, for all its realpolitik gloss, the only beneficiary is the Burmese regime itself.
Take the myth of India countering China which, according to Indian defence analysts has in the last two decades gained a significant foothold in Burma, setting up military installations targeting India and wielding considerable influence on the regime and its strategic thinking. They say that India's strong pro-democracy stand in the wake of the 1988 Burmese uprising provided a window for countries like China and Pakistan to get closer to the Burmese generals.
Indian and other defence analysts, with their blinkered view of the world as a geo-political chess game, forget that the then Indian government's decision to back the pro-democracy movement was not a "mistake" born out of ignorance, but an official reflection of the genuine support for the Burmese people among Indian citizens.
The second myth that propels the Indian foreign ministry to woo the Burmese generals is that by doing so India can get Burma's support in curbing the arms and drugs trafficking that fuel the insurgencies in the Indian Northeast. This argument assumes that the Burmese junta is both willing and able to control the activities of Indian ethnic militants and Burmese drug traffickers along the border. In the case of drug trafficking from Burma there is reason to be worried—groups close to the regime benefit directly from the trade.
Through its current policy the Indian government has achieved none of its strategic aims in Burma and instead alienated Burma's pro-democracy movement and its millions of supporters worldwide. While sections of the Indian population are apathetic or ignorant about their government's policies towards Burma, their silence does not imply approval.
India is not a democracy because of the benevolence of its elitist politicians, bureaucrats and "defence analysts" but despite them and because of the strong abhorrence of dictatorship of any kind among the Indian people. It is high time that the Indian government respected the sentiments of its voters and stopped misusing the term "national interests" to support Burma's military dictators.
As for the Burmese people themselves what the world's wilful impotence in dealing with their brutal rulers indicates is that ultimately they will have to achieve democratic rule in Burma entirely on their own strength.
The people of the world will of course support them in whatever way they can but to expect governments around the globe to help topple the Burmese military regime is as unrealistic as asking the regime to step down on its own. There is no option but to keep the struggle going.
Satya Sagar is a writer, journalist and videomaker based in New Delhi. He can be reached at sagarnama@gmail.com
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Saturday, 29 September 2007
Thanks a million, Ayn Rand, for setting the greedy free
The trickle-down theory beloved of Greenspan and his ilk is less a philosophy than a handy excuse for avarice
Naomi Klein
Saturday September 29, 2007
The Guardian
The tall graduate student, visiting the US from Sweden, would not be satisfied with a quip. He wanted answers. "They cannot only be driven by greed and power. They must be driven by something higher. What?" Don't knock power and greed, I tried to suggest - they have built empires. But he wanted more. "What about a belief that they are building a better world?"
Since I began touring with my book The Shock Doctrine, I have had a number of exchanges like this, revolving around the same basic question: when hard-right political leaders and their advisers apply brutal economic shock therapy, do they honestly believe the trickle-down effects will build equitable societies - or are they just deliberately creating the conditions for yet another corporate feeding frenzy? Put bluntly: has the world been transformed over the past three decades by lofty ideology or by lowly greed?
A definitive answer would require reading the minds of men such as Dick Cheney and Paul Bremer, so I tend to dodge. The ideology in question holds that self-interest is the engine that drives society to its greatest heights. Isn't pursuing their own self-interest (and that of their campaign donors) compatible with that philosophy? That's the beauty: they don't have to choose. Unfortunately, this rarely satisfies graduate students looking for deeper meaning. Thankfully, I now have a new escape hatch: quoting Alan Greenspan.
His autobiography, The Age of Turbulence, has been marketed as a mystery solved. The man who bit his tongue for 18 years as head of the Federal Reserve was finally going to tell the world what he believed. And Greenspan has delivered, using his book and the surrounding publicity as a platform for his "libertarian Republican" ideology, chiding George Bush for abandoning the crusade for small government and revealing that he became a policy-maker because he thought he could advance his radical ideology more effectively "as an insider, rather than as a critical pamphleteer" on the margins. Yet the most interesting aspect of Greenspan's story is what it reveals about the ambiguous role of ideas in the free-market crusade. Given that Greenspan is perhaps the world's most powerful living free-market ideologue, it is significant that his commitment to ideology seems rather thin and perfunctory - less zealous belief, more convenient cover story.
Much of the debate around Greenspan's legacy has revolved around the matter of hypocrisy, of a man preaching laissez faire who repeatedly intervened in the market to save the wealthiest players. The economy that is Greenspan's legacy hardly fits the definition of a libertarian market, but looks very much like another phenomenon described in his book: "When a government's leaders routinely seek out private-sector individuals or businesses and, in exchange for political support, bestow favours on them, the society is said to be in the grip of 'crony capitalism'."
He was talking about Indonesia under Suharto, but my mind went straight to Iraq under Halliburton. Greenspan is currently warning the world about a dangerous looming backlash against capitalism. Apparently, this has nothing at all to do with the policies of negligent deregulation that were his trademark. Nothing to do with stagnant wages due to free trade and weakened unions, nor with pensions lost to Enron or the dotcom crash, nor homes seized in the subprime mortgage crisis. According to Greenspan, rampant inequality is caused by lousy high schools (which also have nothing to do with his ideology's war on the public sphere). I debated with Greenspan on the US radio show Democracy Now! recently and was stunned that this man who preaches the doctrine of personal responsibility refuses to take any at all.
Yet ideological contradictions are only relevant if Greenspan really is a true believer. I'm not convinced. Greenspan writes that as a student he had no interest in big ideas. Unlike his classmates in thrall to Keynesianism, with its promise of building a better world, Greenspan was simply good at maths. He started doing research for powerful corporations; it was profitable, but Greenspan made no claims to a higher social contribution. Then he discovered Ayn Rand. "What she did ... was to make me think why capitalism is not only efficient and practical, but also moral," he said in 1974.
Rand's ideas about the "utopia of greed" allowed Greenspan to keep doing what he was doing but infused his corporate service with a powerful new sense of mission: making money wasn't just good for him, it was good for society as a whole. Of course, the flip side of this is the cruel disregard for those left behind. "Undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfilment," Greenspan wrote as a zealous new convert. "Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should." Was it this mindset that served him well as he supported shock therapy in Russia (72 million impoverished) and east Asia after the 1997 economic crisis (24 million pushed into unemployment)?
Rand has played this role of greed-enabler for countless disciples. According to the New York Times, Atlas Shrugged - Rand's novel that ends with the hero tracing a dollar sign in the air like a benediction - stands as "one of the most influential business books ever written". Since Rand is simply pulped-up Adam Smith, her influence on men such as Greenspan suggests an interesting possibility. Perhaps the true purpose of the entire literature of trickle-down theory is to liberate entrepreneurs to pursue their narrowest advantage while claiming global altruistic motives - not so much an economic philosophy as an elaborate, retroactive rationale.
What Greenspan teaches us is that trickle-down isn't really an ideology after all. It's more like the friend we call after some embarrassing excess who will tell us, "Don't beat yourself up: You deserve it."
Naomi Klein
Saturday September 29, 2007
The Guardian
The tall graduate student, visiting the US from Sweden, would not be satisfied with a quip. He wanted answers. "They cannot only be driven by greed and power. They must be driven by something higher. What?" Don't knock power and greed, I tried to suggest - they have built empires. But he wanted more. "What about a belief that they are building a better world?"
Since I began touring with my book The Shock Doctrine, I have had a number of exchanges like this, revolving around the same basic question: when hard-right political leaders and their advisers apply brutal economic shock therapy, do they honestly believe the trickle-down effects will build equitable societies - or are they just deliberately creating the conditions for yet another corporate feeding frenzy? Put bluntly: has the world been transformed over the past three decades by lofty ideology or by lowly greed?
A definitive answer would require reading the minds of men such as Dick Cheney and Paul Bremer, so I tend to dodge. The ideology in question holds that self-interest is the engine that drives society to its greatest heights. Isn't pursuing their own self-interest (and that of their campaign donors) compatible with that philosophy? That's the beauty: they don't have to choose. Unfortunately, this rarely satisfies graduate students looking for deeper meaning. Thankfully, I now have a new escape hatch: quoting Alan Greenspan.
His autobiography, The Age of Turbulence, has been marketed as a mystery solved. The man who bit his tongue for 18 years as head of the Federal Reserve was finally going to tell the world what he believed. And Greenspan has delivered, using his book and the surrounding publicity as a platform for his "libertarian Republican" ideology, chiding George Bush for abandoning the crusade for small government and revealing that he became a policy-maker because he thought he could advance his radical ideology more effectively "as an insider, rather than as a critical pamphleteer" on the margins. Yet the most interesting aspect of Greenspan's story is what it reveals about the ambiguous role of ideas in the free-market crusade. Given that Greenspan is perhaps the world's most powerful living free-market ideologue, it is significant that his commitment to ideology seems rather thin and perfunctory - less zealous belief, more convenient cover story.
Much of the debate around Greenspan's legacy has revolved around the matter of hypocrisy, of a man preaching laissez faire who repeatedly intervened in the market to save the wealthiest players. The economy that is Greenspan's legacy hardly fits the definition of a libertarian market, but looks very much like another phenomenon described in his book: "When a government's leaders routinely seek out private-sector individuals or businesses and, in exchange for political support, bestow favours on them, the society is said to be in the grip of 'crony capitalism'."
He was talking about Indonesia under Suharto, but my mind went straight to Iraq under Halliburton. Greenspan is currently warning the world about a dangerous looming backlash against capitalism. Apparently, this has nothing at all to do with the policies of negligent deregulation that were his trademark. Nothing to do with stagnant wages due to free trade and weakened unions, nor with pensions lost to Enron or the dotcom crash, nor homes seized in the subprime mortgage crisis. According to Greenspan, rampant inequality is caused by lousy high schools (which also have nothing to do with his ideology's war on the public sphere). I debated with Greenspan on the US radio show Democracy Now! recently and was stunned that this man who preaches the doctrine of personal responsibility refuses to take any at all.
Yet ideological contradictions are only relevant if Greenspan really is a true believer. I'm not convinced. Greenspan writes that as a student he had no interest in big ideas. Unlike his classmates in thrall to Keynesianism, with its promise of building a better world, Greenspan was simply good at maths. He started doing research for powerful corporations; it was profitable, but Greenspan made no claims to a higher social contribution. Then he discovered Ayn Rand. "What she did ... was to make me think why capitalism is not only efficient and practical, but also moral," he said in 1974.
Rand's ideas about the "utopia of greed" allowed Greenspan to keep doing what he was doing but infused his corporate service with a powerful new sense of mission: making money wasn't just good for him, it was good for society as a whole. Of course, the flip side of this is the cruel disregard for those left behind. "Undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfilment," Greenspan wrote as a zealous new convert. "Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should." Was it this mindset that served him well as he supported shock therapy in Russia (72 million impoverished) and east Asia after the 1997 economic crisis (24 million pushed into unemployment)?
Rand has played this role of greed-enabler for countless disciples. According to the New York Times, Atlas Shrugged - Rand's novel that ends with the hero tracing a dollar sign in the air like a benediction - stands as "one of the most influential business books ever written". Since Rand is simply pulped-up Adam Smith, her influence on men such as Greenspan suggests an interesting possibility. Perhaps the true purpose of the entire literature of trickle-down theory is to liberate entrepreneurs to pursue their narrowest advantage while claiming global altruistic motives - not so much an economic philosophy as an elaborate, retroactive rationale.
What Greenspan teaches us is that trickle-down isn't really an ideology after all. It's more like the friend we call after some embarrassing excess who will tell us, "Don't beat yourself up: You deserve it."
Friday, 28 September 2007
How The Bush Administration’s Iraqi Oil Grab Went Awry
By Dilip Hiro
27 September, 2007
Dissident Voice
Here is the sentence in The Age of Turbulence, the 531-page memoir of former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, that caused so much turbulence in Washington last week: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Honest and accurate, it had the resonance of the Bill Clinton’s election campaign mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid.” But, finding himself the target of a White House attack — an administration spokesman labeled his comment, “Georgetown cocktail party analysis” — Greenspan backtracked under cover of verbose elaboration. None of this, however, made an iota of difference to the facts on the ground.
Here is a prosecutor’s brief for the position that “the Iraq War is largely about oil”:
The primary evidence indicating that the Bush administration coveted Iraqi oil from the start comes from two diverse but impeccably reliable sources: Paul O’Neill, the Treasury Secretary (2001-2003) under President George W. Bush; and Falah Al Jibury, a well-connected Iraqi-American oil consultant, who had acted as President Ronald Reagan’s “back channel” to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran War of 1980-88. The secondary evidence is from the material that can be found in such publications as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
According to O’Neill’s memoirs, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill, written by journalist Ron Suskind and published in 2004, the top item on the agenda of the National Security Council’s first meeting after Bush entered the Oval Office was Iraq. That was January 30, 2001, more than seven months before the 9/11 attacks. The next National Security Council (NSC) meeting on February 1st was devoted exclusively to Iraq.
Advocating “going after Saddam” during the January 30 meeting, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, according to O’Neill, “Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that’s aligned with U.S. interests. It would change everything in the region and beyond. It would demonstrate what U.S. policy is all about.” He then discussed post-Saddam Iraq — the Kurds in the north, the oil fields, and the reconstruction of the country’s economy. (Suskind, p. 85)
Among the relevant documents later sent to NSC members, including O’Neill, was one prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It had already mapped Iraq’s oil fields and exploration areas, and listed American corporations likely to be interested in participating in Iraq’s petroleum industry.
Another DIA document in the package, entitled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,” listed companies from 30 countries — France, Germany, Russia, and Britain, among others — their specialties and bidding histories. The attached maps pinpointed “super-giant oil field,” “other oil field,” and “earmarked for production sharing,” and divided the basically undeveloped but oil-rich southwest of Iraq into nine blocks, indicating promising areas for future exploration. (Suskind., p. 96)
According to high flying, oil insider Falah Al Jibury, the Bush administration began making plans for Iraq’s oil industry “within weeks” of Bush taking office in January 2001. In an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight program, which aired on March 17, 2005, he referred to his participation in secret meetings in California, Washington, and the Middle East, where, among other things, he interviewed possible successors to Saddam Hussein.
By January 2003, a plan for Iraqi oil crafted by the State Department and oil majors emerged under the guidance of Amy Myers Jaffe of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. It recommended maintaining the state-owned Iraq National Oil Company, whose origins dated back to 1961 — but open it up to foreign investment after an initial period in which U.S.-approved Iraqi managers would supervise the rehabilitation of the war-damaged oil infrastructure. The existence of this group would come to light in a report by the Wall Street Journal on March 3, 2003.
Unknown to the architects of this scheme, according to the same BBC Newsnight report, the Pentagon’s planners, apparently influenced by powerful neocons in and out of the administration, had devised their own super-secret plan. It involved the sale of all Iraqi oil fields to private companies with a view to increasing output well above the quota set by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for Iraq in order to weaken, and then destroy, OPEC.
Secondary Evidence
On October 11, 2002 the New York Times reported that the Pentagon already had plans to occupy and control Iraq’s oilfields. The next day the Economist described how Americans in the know had dubbed the waterway demarcating the southern borders of Iraq and Iran “Klondike on the Shatt al Arab,” while Ahmed Chalabi, head of the U.S.-funded Iraqi National Congress and a neocon favorite, had already delivered this message: “American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil — if he gets to run the show.”
On October 30, Oil and Gas International revealed that the Bush administration wanted a working group of 12 to 20 people to (a) recommend ways to rehabilitate the Iraqi oil industry “in order to increase oil exports to partially pay for a possible U.S. military occupation government,” (b) consider Iraq’s continued membership of OPEC, and (c) consider whether to honor contracts Saddam Hussein had granted to non-American oil companies.
By late October 2002, columnist Maureen Dowd of the New York Times would later reveal, Halliburton, the energy services company previously headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, had prepared a confidential 500-page document on how to handle Iraq’s oil industry after an invasion and occupation of Iraq. This was, commented Dowd, “a plan [Halliburton] wrote several months before the invasion of Iraq, and before it got a no-bid contract to implement the plan (and overbill the U.S.).” She also pointed out that a Times‘ request for a copy of the plan evinced a distinct lack of response from the Pentagon.
In public, of course, the Bush administration built its case for an invasion of Iraq without referring to that country’s oil or the fact that it had the third largest reserves of petroleum in the world. But what happened out of sight was another matter. At a secret NSC briefing for the President on February 24, 2003, entitled, “Planning for the Iraqi Petroleum Infrastructure,” a State Department economist, Pamela Quanrud, told Bush that it would cost $7-8 billion to rebuild the oil infrastructure, if Saddam decided to blow up his country’s oil wells, according to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in his 2004 book, Plan of Attack (pp. 322-323). Quanrud was evidently a member of the State Department group chaired by Amy Myers Jaffe.
When the Anglo-American troops invaded on March 20, 2003, they expected to see oil wells ablaze. Saddam Hussein proved them wrong. Being a staunch nationalist, he evidently did not want to go down in history as the man who damaged Iraq’s most precious natural resource.
On entering Baghdad on April 9th, the American troops stood by as looters burned and ransacked public buildings, including government ministries — except for the Oil Ministry, which they guarded diligently. Within the next few days, at a secret meeting in London, the Pentagon’s scheme of the sale of all Iraqi oil fields got a go-ahead in principle.
The Bush administration’s assertions that oil was not a prime reason for invading Iraq did not fool Iraqis though. A July 2003 poll of Baghdad residents — who represented a quarter of the Iraqi national population — by the London Spectator showed that while 23% believed the reason for the Anglo-American war on Iraq was “to liberate us from dictatorship,” twice as many responded, “to get oil”. (Cited in Dilip Hiro, Secrets and Lies: Operation “Iraqi Freedom” and After, p. 398.)
As Iraq’s principal occupier, the Bush White House made no secret of its plans to quickly dismantle that country’s strong public sector. When the first American proconsul, retired General Jay Garner, focused on holding local elections rather than privatizing the country’s economic structure, he was promptly sacked.
Hurdles to Oil Privatization Prove Impassable
Garner’s successor, L. Paul Bremer III, found himself dealing with Philip Carroll — former Chief Executive Officer of the American operations of (Anglo-Dutch) Royal Dutch Shell in Houston — appointed by Washington as the Iraqi oil industry’s supreme boss. Carroll decided not to tinker with the industry’s ownership and told Bremer so. “There was to be no privatization of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved,” Carroll said in an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight program on March 17, 2005.
This was, however, but a partial explanation for why Bremer excluded the oil industry when issuing Order 39 in September 2003 privatizing nearly 200 Iraqi public sector companies and opening them up to 100% foreign ownership. The Bush White House had also realized by then that denationalizing the oil industry would be a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions which bar an occupying power from altering the fundamental structure of the occupied territory’s economy.
There was, as well, the vexatious problem of sorting out the 30 major oil development contracts Saddam’s regime had signed with companies based in Canada, China, France, India, Italy, Russia, Spain, and Vietnam. The key unresolved issue was whether these firms had signed contracts with the government of Saddam Hussein, which no longer existed, or with the Republic of Iraq which remained intact.
Perhaps more important was the stand taken by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the senior Shiite cleric in the country and a figure whom the occupying Americans were keen not to alienate. He made no secret of his disapproval of the wholesale privatization of Iraq’s major companies. As for the minerals — oil being the most precious — Sistani declared that they belonged to the “community,” meaning the state. As a religious decree issued by a grand ayatollah, his statement carried immense weight.
Even more effective was the violent reaction of the industry’s employees to the rumors of privatization. In his Newsnight interview Jibury said, “We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities and pipelines built on the premise that privatization is coming.”
In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, much equipment was looted from pipelines, pumping stations, and other oil facilities. By August 2003, four months after American troops entered Baghdad, oil output had only inched up to 1.2 million barrels per day, about two-fifths of the pre-invasion level. The forecasts (or dreams) of American planners’ that oil production would jump to 6 million barrels per day by 2010 and easily fund the occupation and reconstruction of the country, were now seen for what they were — part of the hype disseminated privately by American neocons to sell the idea of invading Iraq to the public.
With the insurgency taking off, attacks on oil pipelines and pumping stations averaged two a week during the second half of 2003. The pipeline connecting a major northern oil field near Kirkuk — with an export capacity of 550,000-700,000 barrels per day — to the Turkish port of Ceyhan became inoperative. Soon, the only oil being exported was from fields in the less disturbed, predominately Shiite south of Iraq.
In September 2003, President Bush approached Congress for $2.1 billion to safeguard and rehabilitate Iraq’s oil facilities. The resulting Task Force Shield project undertook to protect 340 key installations and 4,000 miles (6,400 km) of oil pipeline. It was not until the spring of 2004 that output again reached the pre-war average of 2.5 million barrels per day — and that did not hold. Soon enough, production fell again. Iraqi refineries were, by now, producing only two-fifths of the 24 million liters of gasoline needed by the country daily, and so there were often days-long lines at service stations.
Addressing the 26th Oil and Money conference in London on September 21, 2005, Issam Chalabi, who had been an Iraqi oil minister in the late 1980s, referred to the crippling lack of security and the lack of clear laws to manage the industry, and doubted if Iraq could return to the 1979 peak of 3.5 million barrels per day before 2009, if then.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi government found itself dependent on oil revenues for 90% of its income, a record at a time when corruption in its ministries had become rampant. On January 30, 2005, Stuart W. Bowen, the special inspector general appointed by the U.S. occupation authority, reported that almost $9 billion in Iraqi oil revenue, disbursed to the ministries, had gone missing. A subsequent Congressional inspection team reported in May 2006 that Task Force Shield had failed to meet its goals due to “lack of clear management structure and poor accountability”, and added that there were “indications of potential fraud” which were being reviewed by the Inspector General.
The endorsement of the new Iraqi constitution by referendum in October 2005 finally killed the prospect of full-scale oil privatization. Article 109 of that document stated clearly that hydrocarbons were “national Iraqi property”. That is, oil and gas would remain in the public sector.
In March 2006, three years after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, the country’s petroleum exports were 30% to 40% below pre-invasion levels.
Bush Pushes for Iraq’s Flawed Draft Hydrocarbon Law
In February 2007, in line with the constitution, the draft hydrocarbon law the Iraqi government presented to parliament kept oil and gas in the state sector. It also stipulated recreating a single Iraqi National Oil Company that would be charged with doling out oil income to the provinces on a per-capita basis. The Bush administration latched onto that provision to hype the 43-article Iraqi bill as a key to reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites — since the Sunni areas of Iraq lack hydrocarbons — and so included it (as did Congress) in its list of “benchmarks” the Iraqi government had to meet.
Overlooked by Washington was the way that particular article, after mentioning revenue-sharing, stated that a separate Federal Revenue Law would be necessary to settle the matter of distribution — the first draft of which was only published four months later in June.
Far more than revenue sharing and reconciliation, though, what really interested the Bush White House were the mouthwatering incentives for foreign firms to invest in Iraq’s hydrocarbon industry contained in the draft law. They promised to provide ample opportunities to America’s Oil Majors to reap handsome profits in an oil-rich Iraq whose vast western desert had yet to be explored fully for hydrocarbons. So Bush pressured the Iraqi government to get the necessary law passed before the parliament’s vacation in August — to no avail.
The Bush administration’s failure to achieve its short-term objectives does not detract from the overarching fact — established by the copious evidence marshaled in this article — that gaining privileged access to Iraqi oil for American companies was a primary objective of the Pentagon’s invasion of Iraq.
Dilip Hiro is the author of Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and, most recently, Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Resources , both published by Nation Books.
27 September, 2007
Dissident Voice
Here is the sentence in The Age of Turbulence, the 531-page memoir of former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, that caused so much turbulence in Washington last week: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Honest and accurate, it had the resonance of the Bill Clinton’s election campaign mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid.” But, finding himself the target of a White House attack — an administration spokesman labeled his comment, “Georgetown cocktail party analysis” — Greenspan backtracked under cover of verbose elaboration. None of this, however, made an iota of difference to the facts on the ground.
Here is a prosecutor’s brief for the position that “the Iraq War is largely about oil”:
The primary evidence indicating that the Bush administration coveted Iraqi oil from the start comes from two diverse but impeccably reliable sources: Paul O’Neill, the Treasury Secretary (2001-2003) under President George W. Bush; and Falah Al Jibury, a well-connected Iraqi-American oil consultant, who had acted as President Ronald Reagan’s “back channel” to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran War of 1980-88. The secondary evidence is from the material that can be found in such publications as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
According to O’Neill’s memoirs, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill, written by journalist Ron Suskind and published in 2004, the top item on the agenda of the National Security Council’s first meeting after Bush entered the Oval Office was Iraq. That was January 30, 2001, more than seven months before the 9/11 attacks. The next National Security Council (NSC) meeting on February 1st was devoted exclusively to Iraq.
Advocating “going after Saddam” during the January 30 meeting, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, according to O’Neill, “Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that’s aligned with U.S. interests. It would change everything in the region and beyond. It would demonstrate what U.S. policy is all about.” He then discussed post-Saddam Iraq — the Kurds in the north, the oil fields, and the reconstruction of the country’s economy. (Suskind, p. 85)
Among the relevant documents later sent to NSC members, including O’Neill, was one prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It had already mapped Iraq’s oil fields and exploration areas, and listed American corporations likely to be interested in participating in Iraq’s petroleum industry.
Another DIA document in the package, entitled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,” listed companies from 30 countries — France, Germany, Russia, and Britain, among others — their specialties and bidding histories. The attached maps pinpointed “super-giant oil field,” “other oil field,” and “earmarked for production sharing,” and divided the basically undeveloped but oil-rich southwest of Iraq into nine blocks, indicating promising areas for future exploration. (Suskind., p. 96)
According to high flying, oil insider Falah Al Jibury, the Bush administration began making plans for Iraq’s oil industry “within weeks” of Bush taking office in January 2001. In an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight program, which aired on March 17, 2005, he referred to his participation in secret meetings in California, Washington, and the Middle East, where, among other things, he interviewed possible successors to Saddam Hussein.
By January 2003, a plan for Iraqi oil crafted by the State Department and oil majors emerged under the guidance of Amy Myers Jaffe of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. It recommended maintaining the state-owned Iraq National Oil Company, whose origins dated back to 1961 — but open it up to foreign investment after an initial period in which U.S.-approved Iraqi managers would supervise the rehabilitation of the war-damaged oil infrastructure. The existence of this group would come to light in a report by the Wall Street Journal on March 3, 2003.
Unknown to the architects of this scheme, according to the same BBC Newsnight report, the Pentagon’s planners, apparently influenced by powerful neocons in and out of the administration, had devised their own super-secret plan. It involved the sale of all Iraqi oil fields to private companies with a view to increasing output well above the quota set by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for Iraq in order to weaken, and then destroy, OPEC.
Secondary Evidence
On October 11, 2002 the New York Times reported that the Pentagon already had plans to occupy and control Iraq’s oilfields. The next day the Economist described how Americans in the know had dubbed the waterway demarcating the southern borders of Iraq and Iran “Klondike on the Shatt al Arab,” while Ahmed Chalabi, head of the U.S.-funded Iraqi National Congress and a neocon favorite, had already delivered this message: “American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil — if he gets to run the show.”
On October 30, Oil and Gas International revealed that the Bush administration wanted a working group of 12 to 20 people to (a) recommend ways to rehabilitate the Iraqi oil industry “in order to increase oil exports to partially pay for a possible U.S. military occupation government,” (b) consider Iraq’s continued membership of OPEC, and (c) consider whether to honor contracts Saddam Hussein had granted to non-American oil companies.
By late October 2002, columnist Maureen Dowd of the New York Times would later reveal, Halliburton, the energy services company previously headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, had prepared a confidential 500-page document on how to handle Iraq’s oil industry after an invasion and occupation of Iraq. This was, commented Dowd, “a plan [Halliburton] wrote several months before the invasion of Iraq, and before it got a no-bid contract to implement the plan (and overbill the U.S.).” She also pointed out that a Times‘ request for a copy of the plan evinced a distinct lack of response from the Pentagon.
In public, of course, the Bush administration built its case for an invasion of Iraq without referring to that country’s oil or the fact that it had the third largest reserves of petroleum in the world. But what happened out of sight was another matter. At a secret NSC briefing for the President on February 24, 2003, entitled, “Planning for the Iraqi Petroleum Infrastructure,” a State Department economist, Pamela Quanrud, told Bush that it would cost $7-8 billion to rebuild the oil infrastructure, if Saddam decided to blow up his country’s oil wells, according to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in his 2004 book, Plan of Attack (pp. 322-323). Quanrud was evidently a member of the State Department group chaired by Amy Myers Jaffe.
When the Anglo-American troops invaded on March 20, 2003, they expected to see oil wells ablaze. Saddam Hussein proved them wrong. Being a staunch nationalist, he evidently did not want to go down in history as the man who damaged Iraq’s most precious natural resource.
On entering Baghdad on April 9th, the American troops stood by as looters burned and ransacked public buildings, including government ministries — except for the Oil Ministry, which they guarded diligently. Within the next few days, at a secret meeting in London, the Pentagon’s scheme of the sale of all Iraqi oil fields got a go-ahead in principle.
The Bush administration’s assertions that oil was not a prime reason for invading Iraq did not fool Iraqis though. A July 2003 poll of Baghdad residents — who represented a quarter of the Iraqi national population — by the London Spectator showed that while 23% believed the reason for the Anglo-American war on Iraq was “to liberate us from dictatorship,” twice as many responded, “to get oil”. (Cited in Dilip Hiro, Secrets and Lies: Operation “Iraqi Freedom” and After, p. 398.)
As Iraq’s principal occupier, the Bush White House made no secret of its plans to quickly dismantle that country’s strong public sector. When the first American proconsul, retired General Jay Garner, focused on holding local elections rather than privatizing the country’s economic structure, he was promptly sacked.
Hurdles to Oil Privatization Prove Impassable
Garner’s successor, L. Paul Bremer III, found himself dealing with Philip Carroll — former Chief Executive Officer of the American operations of (Anglo-Dutch) Royal Dutch Shell in Houston — appointed by Washington as the Iraqi oil industry’s supreme boss. Carroll decided not to tinker with the industry’s ownership and told Bremer so. “There was to be no privatization of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved,” Carroll said in an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight program on March 17, 2005.
This was, however, but a partial explanation for why Bremer excluded the oil industry when issuing Order 39 in September 2003 privatizing nearly 200 Iraqi public sector companies and opening them up to 100% foreign ownership. The Bush White House had also realized by then that denationalizing the oil industry would be a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions which bar an occupying power from altering the fundamental structure of the occupied territory’s economy.
There was, as well, the vexatious problem of sorting out the 30 major oil development contracts Saddam’s regime had signed with companies based in Canada, China, France, India, Italy, Russia, Spain, and Vietnam. The key unresolved issue was whether these firms had signed contracts with the government of Saddam Hussein, which no longer existed, or with the Republic of Iraq which remained intact.
Perhaps more important was the stand taken by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the senior Shiite cleric in the country and a figure whom the occupying Americans were keen not to alienate. He made no secret of his disapproval of the wholesale privatization of Iraq’s major companies. As for the minerals — oil being the most precious — Sistani declared that they belonged to the “community,” meaning the state. As a religious decree issued by a grand ayatollah, his statement carried immense weight.
Even more effective was the violent reaction of the industry’s employees to the rumors of privatization. In his Newsnight interview Jibury said, “We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities and pipelines built on the premise that privatization is coming.”
In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, much equipment was looted from pipelines, pumping stations, and other oil facilities. By August 2003, four months after American troops entered Baghdad, oil output had only inched up to 1.2 million barrels per day, about two-fifths of the pre-invasion level. The forecasts (or dreams) of American planners’ that oil production would jump to 6 million barrels per day by 2010 and easily fund the occupation and reconstruction of the country, were now seen for what they were — part of the hype disseminated privately by American neocons to sell the idea of invading Iraq to the public.
With the insurgency taking off, attacks on oil pipelines and pumping stations averaged two a week during the second half of 2003. The pipeline connecting a major northern oil field near Kirkuk — with an export capacity of 550,000-700,000 barrels per day — to the Turkish port of Ceyhan became inoperative. Soon, the only oil being exported was from fields in the less disturbed, predominately Shiite south of Iraq.
In September 2003, President Bush approached Congress for $2.1 billion to safeguard and rehabilitate Iraq’s oil facilities. The resulting Task Force Shield project undertook to protect 340 key installations and 4,000 miles (6,400 km) of oil pipeline. It was not until the spring of 2004 that output again reached the pre-war average of 2.5 million barrels per day — and that did not hold. Soon enough, production fell again. Iraqi refineries were, by now, producing only two-fifths of the 24 million liters of gasoline needed by the country daily, and so there were often days-long lines at service stations.
Addressing the 26th Oil and Money conference in London on September 21, 2005, Issam Chalabi, who had been an Iraqi oil minister in the late 1980s, referred to the crippling lack of security and the lack of clear laws to manage the industry, and doubted if Iraq could return to the 1979 peak of 3.5 million barrels per day before 2009, if then.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi government found itself dependent on oil revenues for 90% of its income, a record at a time when corruption in its ministries had become rampant. On January 30, 2005, Stuart W. Bowen, the special inspector general appointed by the U.S. occupation authority, reported that almost $9 billion in Iraqi oil revenue, disbursed to the ministries, had gone missing. A subsequent Congressional inspection team reported in May 2006 that Task Force Shield had failed to meet its goals due to “lack of clear management structure and poor accountability”, and added that there were “indications of potential fraud” which were being reviewed by the Inspector General.
The endorsement of the new Iraqi constitution by referendum in October 2005 finally killed the prospect of full-scale oil privatization. Article 109 of that document stated clearly that hydrocarbons were “national Iraqi property”. That is, oil and gas would remain in the public sector.
In March 2006, three years after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, the country’s petroleum exports were 30% to 40% below pre-invasion levels.
Bush Pushes for Iraq’s Flawed Draft Hydrocarbon Law
In February 2007, in line with the constitution, the draft hydrocarbon law the Iraqi government presented to parliament kept oil and gas in the state sector. It also stipulated recreating a single Iraqi National Oil Company that would be charged with doling out oil income to the provinces on a per-capita basis. The Bush administration latched onto that provision to hype the 43-article Iraqi bill as a key to reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites — since the Sunni areas of Iraq lack hydrocarbons — and so included it (as did Congress) in its list of “benchmarks” the Iraqi government had to meet.
Overlooked by Washington was the way that particular article, after mentioning revenue-sharing, stated that a separate Federal Revenue Law would be necessary to settle the matter of distribution — the first draft of which was only published four months later in June.
Far more than revenue sharing and reconciliation, though, what really interested the Bush White House were the mouthwatering incentives for foreign firms to invest in Iraq’s hydrocarbon industry contained in the draft law. They promised to provide ample opportunities to America’s Oil Majors to reap handsome profits in an oil-rich Iraq whose vast western desert had yet to be explored fully for hydrocarbons. So Bush pressured the Iraqi government to get the necessary law passed before the parliament’s vacation in August — to no avail.
The Bush administration’s failure to achieve its short-term objectives does not detract from the overarching fact — established by the copious evidence marshaled in this article — that gaining privileged access to Iraqi oil for American companies was a primary objective of the Pentagon’s invasion of Iraq.
Dilip Hiro is the author of Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and, most recently, Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Resources , both published by Nation Books.
Thursday, 27 September 2007
Terry Jenner on Leg Spin
'A good spinner needs a ten-year apprenticeship'
Nagraj Gollapudi
September 27, 2007
Terry Jenner played nine Tests for Australia in the 1970s but it is as a coach, and specifically as Shane Warne's mentor and the man Warne turned to in a crisis, that he is better known. Jenner said that his CV wouldn't be complete without a trip to India, the spiritual home of spin bowling, and this September he finally made it when he was invited by the MAC Spin Foundation to train youngsters in Chennai. Jenner spoke at length to Cricinfo on the art and craft of spin bowling in general and legspin in particular. What follows is the first in a two-part interview.
"Most of the time the art of the spin bowler is to get the batsman to look to drive you. That's where your wickets come"
How has the role of spin changed over the decades you've watched cricket?
The limited-overs game has made the major change to spin bowling. When I started playing, for example, you used to break partnerships in the first couple of the days of the match and then on the last couple of days you were expected to play more of a major role. But in recent years, with the entry of Shane Warne, who came on on the first day of the Test and completely dominated on good pitches, it has sort of changed the specs that way.
But the difficulty I'm reading at the moment is that captains and coaches seem to be of the opinion that spin bowlers are there either to rest the pace bowlers or to just keep it tight; they are not allowed to risk runs to gain rewards. That's the biggest change.
In the 1960s, when I first started, you were allowed to get hit around the park a bit, as long as you managed to get wickets - it was based more on your strike-rate than how many runs you went for. So limited-overs cricket has influenced bowlers to bowl a negative line and not the attacking line, and I don't know with the advent of Twenty20 how we'll advance. We will never go back, unfortunately, to the likes of Warne and the wrist-spinners before him who went for runs but the quality was more.
What are the challenges of being a spinner in modern cricket?
The huge challenge is just getting to bowl at club level through to first-class level. When you get to the first-class level they tend to you allow you to bowl, but once you get to bowl, instead of allowing you to be a free spirit, you are restricted to men around the bat - push it through, don't let the batsman play the stroke, don't free their arms up ... all those modern thoughts on how the spinner should bowl.
Do spinners spin the ball less these days?
The capacity to spin is still there, but to spin it you actually have to flight it up, and if you flight it up there's always that risk of over-pitching and the batsman getting you on the full, and therefore the risk of runs being scored. So if you consider the general mentality of a spinner trying to bowl dot balls and bowl defensive lines, then you can't spin it.
I'll give you an example of an offspin bowler bowling at middle and leg. How far does he want to spin it? If he needs to spin it, he needs to bowl a foot outside the off stump and spin it back, but if he has to bowl a defensive line then he sacrifices the spin, otherwise he'll be just bowling down the leg side.
It's impossible for you to try and take a wicket every ball, but when you're really young that's what you do - you just try and spin it as hard as you can and take the consequences, and that usually means you don't get to bowl many overs. The art of improving is when you learn how to get into your overs, get out of your overs, and use the middle deliveries to attack
Legspinners bowling at leg stump or just outside - there's been so few over the years capable of spinning the ball from just outside leg past off, yet that's the line they tend to bowl. So I don't think they spin it any less; the capacity to spin is still wonderful. I still see little kids spinning the ball a long way. I take the little kids over to watch the big kids bowl and I say, "Have a look: the big kids are all running in off big, long runs, jumping high in the air and firing it down there, and more importantly going straight." And I say to the little kids, "They once were like you. And one of you who hangs on to the spin all the way through is the one that's gonna go forward."
Great spinners have always bowled at the batsman and not to the batsman. But the trend these days is that spinners are becoming increasingly defensive.
First of all they play him [the young spinner] out of his age group. Earlier the idea of finding a good, young talent, when people identified one, was that they didn't move him up and play him in the higher grade or in the higher age group. There was no different age-group cricket around back then, and if you were a youngster you went into the seniors and you played in the bottom grade and then you played there for a few years while you learned the craft and then they moved you to the next grade. So you kept going till you came out the other end and that could've been anywhere around age 19, 20, 21 or whatever. Now the expectation is that by the time you are 16 or 17 you are supposed to be mastering this craft.
It's a long apprenticeship. If you find a good 10- or 11-year-old, he needs to have a ten-year apprenticeship at least. There's a rule of thumb here that says that if the best there's ever been, which is Shane Warne - and there is every reason to believe he is - sort of started to strike his best at 23-24, what makes you think we can find 18- or 19-year-olds to do it today? I mean, he [Warne] has only been out of the game for half an hour and yet we're already expecting kids to step up to the plate much, much before they are ready.
It's a game of patience with spin bowlers and developing them. It's so important that we are patient in helping them, understanding their need for patience, at the same time understanding from outside the fence - as coach, captain etc. We need to understand them and allow them to be scored off, allow them to learn how to defend themselves, allow them to understand that there are times when you do need to defend. But most of the time the art of the spin bowler is to get the batsman to look to drive you. That's where your wickets come, that's where you spin it most.
Warne said you never imposed yourself as a coach.
With Warne, when I first met him he bowled me a legbreak which spun nearly two feet-plus, and I was just in awe. All I wanted to do was try and help that young man become the best he could be, just to help him understand his gift, understand what he had, and to that end I never tried to change him. That's what he meant by me never imposing myself. We established a good relationship based on the basics of bowling and his basics were always pretty good. Over the years whenever he wandered away from them, we worked it back to them. There were lot of times over his career where, having a bowled a lot of overs, some bad habits had come in. It was not a case of standing over him. I was just making him aware of where he was at the moment and how he could be back to where he was when he was spinning them and curving them. His trust was the most important gift that he gave me, and it's an important thing for a coach to understand not to breach that trust. That trust isn't about secrets, it's about the trust of the information you give him, that it won't harm him, and that was our relationship.
I don't think of myself as an authority on spin bowling. I see myself as a coach who's developed a solid learning by watching and working with the best that's been, and a lot of other developing spinners. So I'm in a terrific business-class seat because I get to see a lot of this stuff and learn from it, and of course I've spoken to Richie Benaud quite a lot over the years.
Shane would speak to Abdul Qadir and he would feed back to me what Abdul Qadir said. Most people relate your knowledge to how many wickets you took and I don't think that's relevant. I think it's your capacity to learn and deliver, to communicate that what you've learned back to people.
From the outside it seems like there is a problem of over-coaching these days.
There are so many coaches now. We have specialist coaches, general coaches, we've got sports science and psychology. Coaching has changed.
Shane, in his retirement speech, referred to me as his technical coach (by which he meant technique), as Dr Phil [the psychologist on the Oprah Winfrey Show]. That means when he wanted someone to talk to, I was the bouncing board. He said the most uplifting thing ever said about me: that whenever he rang me, when he hung the phone up he always felt better for having made the call.
"Think high, spin up" was the first mantra you shared with Warne. What does it mean?
When I first met Shane his arm was quite low, and back then, given I had no genuine experience of coaching spin, I asked Richie Benaud and made him aware of this young Shane Warne fellow and asked him about the shoulder being low. Richie said, "As long as he spins it up from the hand, it'll be fine." But later, when we tried to introduce variations, we talked about the topspinner and I said to Shane, "You're gonna have to get your shoulder up to get that topspinner to spin over the top, otherwise it spins down low and it won't produce any shape." So when he got back to his mark the trigger in his mind was "think high, spin up", and when he did that he spun up over the ball and developed the topspinner. Quite often even in the case of the legbreak it was "think high, spin up" because his arm tended to get low, especially after his shoulder operation.
Can you explain the risk-for-reward theory that you teach youngsters about?
This is part of learning the art and craft. It's impossible for you to try and take a wicket every ball, but when you're really young that's what you do - you just try and spin it as hard as you can and take the consequences, and that usually means you don't get to bowl many overs. The art of improving is when you learn how to get into your overs, get out of your overs, and use the middle deliveries in an over to attack. I called them the risk and reward balls in an over. In other words, you do risk runs off those deliveries but you can also gain rewards.
There's been no one in the time that I've been around who could theoretically bowl six wicket-taking balls an over other than SK Warne. The likes of [Anil] Kumble ... he's trying to keep the lines tight and keep you at home, keep you at home while he works on you, but he's not trying to get you out every ball, he's working a plan.
The thing about excellent or great bowlers is that they rarely go for a four or a six off the last delivery. That is the point I make to kids, explaining how a mug like me used to continually go for a four or six off the last ball of the over while trying to get a wicket so I could stay on. And when you do that, that's the last thing your captain remembers, that's the last thing your team-mates remember, it's the last thing the selectors remember. So to that end you are better off bowling a quicker ball in line with the stumps which limits the batsman's opportunities to attack. So what I'm saying is, there's always a time when you need to defend, but you've got to know how to attack and that's why you need such a long apprenticeship.
Warne said the most uplifting thing ever said about me: that whenever he rang me, when he hung the phone up he always felt better for having made the call. Richie Benaud writes in his book that his dad told him to keep it simple and concentrate on perfecting the stock ball. Benaud says that you shouldn't even think about learning the flipper before you have mastered the legbreak, top spinner and wrong'un. Do you agree?
I totally agree with what Richie said. If you don't have a stock ball, what is the variation? You know what I'm saying? There are five different deliveries a legbreak bowler can bowl, but Warne said on more than one occasion that because of natural variation you can bowl six different legbreaks in an over; what's important is the line and length that you are bowling that encourages the batsman to get out of his comfort zone or intimidates him, and that's the key to it all. Richie spun his legbreak a small amount by comparison with Warne but because of that his use of the slider and the flipper were mostly effective because he bowled middle- and middle-and-off lines, whereas Warne was leg stump, outside leg stump.
Richie's a wise man and in the days he played there were eight-ball overs here in Australia. If you went for four an over, you were considered to be a pretty handy bowler. If you go for four an over now, it's expensive - that's because it's six-ball overs. But Richie was a great example of somebody who knew his strengths and worked on whatever weaknesses he might've had. He knew he wasn't a massive spinner of the ball, therefore his line and length had to be impeccable, and he worked around that.
In fact, in his autobiography Warne writes, "What matters is not always how many deliveries you possess, but how many the batsmen thinks you have."
That's the mystery of spin, isn't it? I remember, every Test series Warnie would come out with a mystery ball or something like that, but the truth is there are only so many balls that you can really bowl - you can't look like you're bowling a legbreak and bowl an offbreak.
Sonny Ramdhin was very difficult to read as he bowled with his sleeves down back in the 1950s; he had an unique grip and unique way of releasing the ball, as does Murali [Muttiah Muralitharan]. What they do with their wrists, it's very difficult to pick between the offbreak and the legbreak. Generally a legbreak bowler has to locate his wrist in a position to enhance the spin in the direction he wants the ball to go, which means the batsman should be able to see the relocation of the wrist.
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In part two of his interview on the art of spin bowling, Terry Jenner looks at the damage caused to young spinners by the curbs placed on their attacking instincts. He also surveys the current slow-bowling landscape and appraises the leading practitioners around.
"Most spin bowlers have enormous attacking instinct, which gets suppressed by various captains and coaches" Nagraj Gollapudi
Bishan Bedi once said that a lot of bowling is done in the mind. Would you say that spin bowling requires the most mental energy of all the cricketing arts?
The thing about that is Bishan Bedi - who has, what, 260-odd Test wickets? - bowled against some of the very best players ever to go around the game. He had at his fingertips the control of spin and pace. Now, when you've got that, when you've developed that ability, then it's just about when to use them, how to use them, so therefore it becomes a matter of the brain. You can't have the brain dominating your game when you haven't got the capacity to bowl a legbreak or an offbreak where you want it to land. So that's why you have to practise those stock deliveries until it becomes just natural for you - almost like you can land them where you want them to land blindfolded, and then it just becomes mind over matter. Then the brain does take over.
There's nothing better than watching a quality spin bowler of any yolk - left-hand, right-hand - working on a quality batsman who knows he needs to break the bowler's rhythm or he might lose his wicket. That contest is a battle of minds then, because the quality batsman's got the technique and the quality bowler's got the capacity to bowl the balls where he wants to, within reason. So Bishan is exactly right.
What came naturally to someone like Bedi was flight. How important is flight in spin bowling?
When I was very young someone said to me, "You never beat a batsman off the pitch unless you first beat him in the air." Some people think that's an old-fashioned way of bowling. Once, at a conference in England, at Telford, Bishan said "Spin is in the air and break is off the pitch", which supported exactly what that guy told me 40 years ago. On top of that Bedi said stumping was his favourite dismissal because you had beaten the batsman in the air and then off the pitch. You wouldn't get too many coaches out there today who would endorse that remark because they don't necessarily understand what spin really is.
When you appraised the trainees in Chennai [at the MAC Spin Foundation], you said if they can separate the one-day cricket shown on TV and the one-day cricket played at school level, then there is a chance a good spinner will come along.
What I was telling them was: when you bowl a ball that's fairly flat and short of a length and the batsman goes back and pushes it to the off side, the whole team claps because no run was scored off it. Then you come in and toss the next one up and the batsman drives it to cover and it's still no run, but no one applauds it; they breathe a sigh of relief. That's the lack of understanding we have within teams about the role of the spin bowler. You should be applauding when he has invited the batsman to drive because that's what courage is, that's where the skill is, that's where the spin is, and that's where the wickets come. Bowling short of a length, that's the role of a medium pacer, part-timer. Most spin bowlers have enormous attacking instinct which gets suppressed by various captains, coaches and ideological thoughts in clubs and teams.
You talked at the beginning of the interview about the importance of being patient with a spinner. But isn't it true that the spinner gets another chance even if he gets hit, but the batsman never does?
I don't think you can compare them that way. If the spinner gets hit, he gets taken off. If he goes for 10 or 12 off an over, they take him off. Batsmen have got lots of things in their favour.
What I mean by patience is that to develop the craft takes a lot of overs, lots of balls in the nets, lots of target bowling. And you don't always get a bowl. Even if you are doing all this week-in, week-out, you don't always get to bowl, so you need to be patient. And then one day you walk into the ground and finally they toss you the ball. It is very easy to behave in a hungry, desperate manner because you think, "At last, I've got the ball." And you forget all the good things you do and suddenly try to get a wicket every ball because it's your only hope of getting into the game and staying on. The result is, you don't actually stay on and you don't get more games. So the patience, which is what you learn as you go along, can only come about if the spinner is allowed to develop at his pace instead of us pushing him up the rung because we think we've found one at last.
How much of a role does attitude play?
Attitude is an interesting thing. Depends on how you refer to it - whether it's attitude to bowling, attitude to being hit, attitude to the game itself.
When Warne was asked what a legspin bowler needs more than anything else, he said, "Love". What he meant was love and understanding. They need someone to put their arm around them and say, "Mate, its okay, tomorrow is another day." Because you get thumped, mate. When you are trying to spin the ball from the back of your hand and land it in an area that's a very small target, that takes a lot of skill, and it also requires the patience to develop that skill. That's what I mean by patience, and the patience also needs to be with the coach, the captain, and whoever else is working with this young person, and the parents, who need to understand that he is not going to develop overnight.
And pushing him up the grade before he is ready isn't necessarily a great reward for him because that puts pressure on him all the time. Any person who plays under pressure all the time, ultimately the majority of them break. That's not what you want, you want them to come through feeling sure, scoring lots of wins, feeling good about themselves, recognising their role in the team, and having their team-mates recognise their role.
I don't think people - coaches, selectors - let the spin bowler know what his role actually is. He gets in the team and suddenly he gets to bowl and is told, "Here's the field, bowl to this", and in his mind he can't bowl.
Could you talk about contemporary spinners - Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Daniel Vettori, Monty Panesar, and Muttiah Muralitharan of course?
Of all the spinners today, the one I admire most of all is Vettori. He has come to Australia on two or three occasions and on each occasion he has troubled the Australian batsmen. He is a man who doesn't spin it a lot but he has an amazing ability to change the pace, to force the batsman into thinking he can drive it, but suddenly they have to check their stroke. And that's skill. If you haven't got lots of spin, then you've got to have the subtlety of change of pace.
And, of course, there is Kumble. I always marvel at the fact that he has worked his career around mainly containment and at the same time bowled enough wicket-taking balls to get to 566 wickets. That's a skill in itself. He is such a humble person as well and I admire him.
I marvel a little bit at Murali's wrist because it is very clever what he does with that, but to the naked eye I can't tell what is 15 degrees and what's not. I've just got to accept the word above us. All I know is that it would be very difficult to coach someone else to bowl like Murali. So we've got to put him in a significant list of one-offs - I hate to use the word "freak" - that probably won't be repeated.
I don't see enough of Harbhajan Singh - he is in and out of the Indian side. What I will say is that when I do see him bowl, I love the position of the seam. He has a beautiful seam position.
"Daniel Vettori doesn't spin it a lot, but he has an amazing ability to change the pace, to force the batsman into thinking he can drive it" © AFP
I love the way Stuart MacGill spins the ball. He is quite fearless in his capacity to spin the ball.
I love the energy that young [Piyush] Chawla displays in his bowling. The enthusiasm and the rawness, if you like. This is what I mean when I talk about pushing the boundaries. He is 18, playing limited-overs cricket, and at the moment he is bowling leggies and wrong'uns and I think that's terrific. But I hope the time doesn't come when he no longer has to spin the ball. When he tries to hold his place against Harbhajan Singh, for example. To do that he has to fire them in much quicker. He is already around the 80kph mark, which is quite healthy for a 18-year-old boy, but he still spins it at that pace, so it's fine. But ultimately if he is encouraged to bowl at a speed at which he doesn't spin the ball, that would be the sad part.
That's why I say this, there are lots of spinners around but it's the young, developing spinners who are probably suffering from all the stuff from television that encourages defence as a means to being successful as a spinner.
Monty is an outstanding prospect. You've got to look at how a guy can improve. He has done very, very well but how can he improve? He has got to have a change-up, a change of pace. At the moment, if you look at the speed gun in any given over from Monty, it's 56.2mph on average every ball. So he bowls the same ball; his line, his length, everything is impeccable, but then when it's time to knock over a tail, a couple of times he has been caught short because he has not been able to vary his pace. I think Monty is such an intelligent bowler and person that he will be in the nets working on that to try and make sure he can invite the lower order to have a go at him and not just try and bowl them out. That probably is his area of concern; the rest of it is outstanding.
What would you say are the attributes of a good spinner?
Courage, skill, patience, unpredictability, and spin. You get bits and pieces of all those, but if you have got spin then there is always a chance you can develop the other areas. For all the brilliant things that people saw Warne do, his greatest strength was the size of the heart, and that you couldn't see.
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